Thursday, January 7, 2016

Bill Turner: “We now know what happened at Dealey
Plaza to a fairly good degree of certainty. The motives were piling up – the Bay of Pigs,
the Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam, the two-track back channel to Cuba – the
motives were piling up to the point they had to assassinate him. I think it’s
now pretty obvious, with the information we have today, that the mechanism of
it came out of the alliance between the CIA and the Mafia. They already had
an assassination apparatus set up for killing Castro, and they just switched
targets and they killed JFK instead.”

"The Cuban snipers were trained at Point Mary, north of
Key Largo, Florida."

William
Weyand Turner, 88, of San Rafael, CA passed away on Saturday, December 26th
after a long struggle with Parkinson's.

He was
born April 14, 1927 in Buffalo, NY.

He served
in the Navy during WWII and then attended Canisius College in Buffalo, NY where
he obtained a Chemistry degree and was their first goalie.

He was
drafted by the New York Rangers, but ended up working for the FBI as a Special
Agent for 10 years.

He
"resigned" after testifying to Congress about problems at the FBI
under J. Edgar Hoover.

After
leaving the FBI he worked as a journalist investigating the JFK assassination,
then as an Investigator for Jim Garrison's inquiry into the JFK assassination.

This
led to his becoming an author and authority on both Kennedy assassinations.

He wrote
such books as Hoover's FBI, The Fish is Red, and the 10 Second Jailbreak that
was made in to the movie "Breakout" with Charles Bronson.

He loved
tennis, golf, reading, and spending time with friends and family.

He is
survived by his loving wife of 51 years, Margaret, two children Mark and Lori,
two sisters Janet and Maggie, 3 grandchildren Austin, Cassidy, and Kolton, and
great grandson Michael.

After the war Turner enrolled at Canisius College, a Jesuit
school, and in 1949 obtained a degree in chemistry. Turner also played
semi-professional baseball and ice hockey.

Turner joined the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) in 1951. He worked for the FBI for ten years but
grew increasingly concerned with the way J. Edgar Hoover ran
the organization. Turner became convinced that Hoover was placing too much
emphasis on the dangers of the American Communist
Party. Instead, he felt he should be using more resources to tackle
organized crime. In 1961 Turner was dismissed from the FBI. He hired Edward Bennett
Williamsand sued the FBI but lost. However he did manage to get anti-Hoover
testimony by other agents into the record.

Turner argued that the Kennedy
assassination was a paramilitary operation, with riflemen firing from at least
three angles. Stephen
Rivele agreed with this viewpoint and in the television documentary, The Men Who Killed
Kennedy, named Lucien
Sarti as being the gunman on the grassy knoll.

Turner also argues that John F. Kennedy was
assassinated because he was planning to withdraw American forces from Vietnam. He also
argued that Robert
Kennedy was murdered because if he had been elected president he would
have ordered a full investigation into his brother's death.

SACRAMENTO (CBS13) – On Friday Nov.
22, 1963, less than an hour after he had arrived in Dallas for a rally,
President John F. Kennedy was gunned down.

Now, 50 years later, we’re hearing
from a man who’s dedicated his entire life to figuring out what really happened
that day, and he says he knows the truth.

“I smelled a rat,” said William
Turner.

He has seen it more times than he
cares to count. The grainy Zapruder film captured a pivotal moment in American
history — the shot seen and heard around the world.

President Kennedy was shot in the
head and rushed to a Dallas hospital. There was nothing doctors could to do
save him.

Turner saw the aftermath first hand,
arriving in Dallas just hours after the assassination.

“It was a somber and eerie
situation,” he said. “It was half dark and people were crying.”

Turner was a G-Man — an FBI agent
from 1951 to 1961 — with counter espionage and major crime cases his specialty.

However, He grew increasingly
concerned by the way J. Edgar Hoover was running the bureau. Hoover found out
and cut Turner loose.

So, he parlayed his investigative
talents into becoming a journalist. His very first assignment was to head to
Dallas to cover the breakdown of security during the assassination.

He scoured Dealey Plaza, asking
questions, and using former FBI colleagues as confidential sources.

“I conducted the investigation and
had two pieces of information that I thought might be pertinent,” Turner said.

Witnesses, including a police
officer, told him they thought there was a second shooter.

“He thought he heard three shots
from an upper area equally spaced,” said Turner. “A woman ran up to him from
the direction of what we now know as the Grassy Knoll and the bushes there, and
said ‘they were shooting from the bushes.’ ”

The Warren Commission concluded in
the official government report there was a lone gunman — Lee Harvey Oswald.

“The bushes are a good distance from
the supposed sniper perch of Oswald,” said Turner. “I tucked that in my bonnet
and it demonstrated there were at least two shooters.”

Turner was one of the first to
report that. Days then turned to hours, which turned to decades. A lifetime of
research led Turner to a shocking conclusion — the Kennedy’s murder was
choreographed by our own CIA.

“I think what happened was a
capacity for assassination was set up by (a) CIA base in the Everglades called
Point Mary. That’s where they trained Cuban snipers,” said Turner.

He says two of those Cuban snipers
were sent to assassinate the president. The CIA and Kennedy had a falling out
after the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion in Cuba. After the failed plan to oust
Fidel Castro, it’s reported that Kennedy promised to smash the CIA into a
thousand pieces.

But would the CIA really plot to
kill a U.S. president?

“I believe the mafia was allied with
the CIA in assassinating Kennedy, and I think we’ve proven that and should go
ahead with closure — designating it a conspiracy and not a single man’s work,”
said Turner.

It’s a tangled web. Turner believes
President Lyndon B. Johnson worried a full investigation could reveal plans to
assassinate Castro — a finding he feared could escalate into a nuclear war with
Cuba and their soviet allies.

“National security is used as an
excuse for all kinds of ridiculous activities and the failure to investigate
the assassination of JFK was one of their worst failures,” said Turner.

He says there was one thing that
kept him going all these years.

“I’m known as being very stubborn. I
think that explains it all,” said Turner.

JFK experts credit Turner for the
Cuban connection and the release of scores of once-top secret documents.

Although Turner doesn’t believe
Americans will ever know the whole truth, even after 50 years in search of it,
he has he wants those seeking to know.

“Keep the faith,” he said.

DANGLING LEE HARVEY OSWALD: FROM NEW
ORLEANS TO DALLAS

BY
WILLIAM W. TURNER

In intelligence parlance
dangling is sending out an operative to
pose as an opposition activist to see who is attracted to his cause.
During the McCarthy era, for example, the FBI trolled for Red fish.
This was the role that Oswald played out on the streets of New Orleans
during the cirtical summer of 1963 as he promoted his rump chapter of
the Fair Play for Cuba Committee

Oswald's
controller was W. Guy Banister, a former FBI official
whose New Orleans private detective agency covered for intelligence
activities. During the 1961 CIA-organized Bay of Pigs invasion his
office was the nerve center for a provocative attack on Guantanemo by
Cuban exiles dressed as Castro regulars. Afterwards, when the CIA
campaign shifted into a low-profile high-intensity mode, Banister's
operations became even livelier. Exile publicist Ricardo Davis has
disclosed that Banister proposed "putting poison in the
air-conditioning ducts in the Havana Presidental Palace and killing all
occupants."

And Jerry Milton Brooks, a defector from the
paramilitary
right-wing Minutemen, has revealed that Banister associate Maurice
Gatlin, who dubbed himself a "CIA transporter," in 1962 delivered
$100,000 to plotters against the life of Charles De Gaulle.

It
was into this murderous environment that Oswald was drawn. As
early as 1961, when he was still in the Soviet Union, his name was
used. Three months before the Bay of Pigs two men, a Cuban and an
Anglo, asked Bolton Ford to bid on ten trucks for the Friends of
Democratic Cuba, a CIA front incorporated by Guy Banister. The Cuban
instructed that the bid be put in the name of the e anti-Csatro action
groups. A sheriff's informant reported that Oswald was there,

that he belonged to the group.

On November 22 after the shots were fired Oswald fled the Texas School
Book Depository Building and headed towards Oak Cliff. There is
compelling evidence that he fled because he realized he had been set up
as a "patsy". Paraffin tests conducted after he was captured
determined that there were no nitrates on his cheek from firing a rifle
but they were present on his hands, indicating a handgun. Police
lieutenant Carl Day, who processed the Carcano rifle, identified a
partial palmprint as Oswald's. But the print could only have been
placed when the rifle was disassembled and Day recently said that it
wasn't new, meaning it was placed days or weeks before.

In
1966 I interviewed three attendants at a gas station on the
Oak Cliff end of the Houston Street Viaduct that the fleeing Oswald
traveled in a taxi. They said that Office J.D. Tippit, who had been
parked at the station watching traffic come off the viaduct, suddenly
sped off towards Oak Cliff. Landlady Earlene Roberts reported that
when Oswald was temporarily in his room -- presumably arming himself
with his revolver --- a police car pulled up in front and honked. She
said it was car number 107 and that two officers were in it. The
Warren Commission dismissed her testimony because Tippit was alone in
car 10. But Roberts had poor vision and could easily have added a
number and mistaken Tippit's uniform jacket on a hanger in the car's
window for a second officer. Ten blocks away, Tippit ran Oswald to
ground and was shot. If Oswald was headed for the Alpha 66 location,
which was the direction he was taking, he would have found it vacated.

The
inevitable conclusions are that Tippit knew Oswald bysight
and was stalking him. Jack Ruby then stalked Oswald and got his chance
two days later. Oswald went from dangling to dead, never to identify
his controllers.

A former FBI agent and investigative
journalist examines the fateful meeting between Castro and Nixon and the murky
connections that existed between official Washington, the CIA, and organized
crime in Cuba. His vivid narrative provides insider information that many in
power never wanted the public to know. In April 1959, Fidel Castro toured the
United States at the invitation of the American Society of Newspaper Editors.
Though he was wary, Castro entertained some hope of establishing an
approchement with Washington. But after being snubbed by President Eisenhower
and receiving a less-than-cordial reception from Vice President Richard Nixon,
Castro got the strong impression that US intentions toward his new Cuban
government were hostile. Based on firsthand interviews with many of the key
players involved in Cuban-American relations of that era, plus thorough
background research, Turner raises a host of disturbing questions. Before the
ouster of the Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista by Castro, why did Vice
President Nixon often socialize at Havana casinos with his Cuban friend Bebe
Rebozo? How was the rabid anti-Communism of the Eisenhower administration,
especially its instant dislike of Castro, connected to its cozy relationship
with the former mob-controlled dictatorship? How did all of this set the stage
for the Bay of Pigs fiasco and, ultimately, the Cuban Missile Crisis and the
JFK assassination?

COMMENTS

Jim Lesar: He donated papers to the
AARC. As soon as time and resources permit, I plan to have them digitized
and placed on the AARC's website.

Peter Dale Scott: Bill Turner was one
the last survivors from the first generation of isolated researchers into the
Kennedy assassination. In addition his book Hoover’s FBI(1970) was an
important record in breaking down the wall of protection that once surrounded
the reputation of J. Edgar Hoover. His books on the actions of the Cuban
anti-Castro exiles are still invaluable resources.

In that early era when not all
researchers were easy to work with, I remember Bill in part for his equanimity
and good humor, as well as for his courage and commitment. He was also a great
raconteur, and will be missed by many.

John Simkin: Sorry to hear about the
death of William Weyland Turner. I never met him but he was always helpful by
email. It should not be forgotten that
Turner was the senior editor at Ramparts when several articles
appeared on the subject of the assassination of JFK. Books by Turner
includeHoover's FBI: The Men and the Myth (1970), Power on the Right (1973), The
Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (1978), The Fish Is Red: The Story
of the Secret War Against Castro (1981) and Deadly
Secrets (1992) (with Warren Hinckle). He also wrote a great
autobiography, Rearview Mirror: Looking Back at the FBI, the CIA and Other
Tails (2001). In his book he published details of wiretapping and bugging
abuses by the FBI, its secret campaign against left-wing groups such as Cesar
Chavez's United Farm Workers Union and the stealth war against Cuba.

Lamar Waldron: Sad news – – Bill was
a great guy!

Bill was a very brave guy, who went
up against Hoover at a time when even Presidents and Senators were afraid of
Hoover's power.

Bill was very helpful to me in my
early research, starting in the late 1980s. He provided all of his notes
for key interviews he had done with people like Harry Williams, which let Thom
and I get much much farther with those people on very sensitive subjects.

It has been a year or two since I
had spoken with Bill, but he remained very helpful. He told me about the
time he was with Jim Garrison in New Orleans, and Carlos Marcello's brother
seemed very friendly with Garrison, and invited them both out. (I can't
remember if I had room for that story in my last book.)

I think Bill's best book was probably
Deadly Secrets, the updated version of The Fish is Red.

He will be missed.

Bill Kelly: During the ASK conference in Dallas Bill Turner was one of the two dozen participants at the very first meeting of the group that would form COPA - the Coalition on Political Assassinations, held at the West End Pub. He was a very inspirational leader who gave us good advice and always spoke at the COPA conferences.